


you'll rebel to anything

by perilousgard



Category: Paper Girls (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Gen, Period-Typical Homophobia, Underage Smoking, only light reference to the ship bc this is backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 01:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13471011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perilousgard/pseuds/perilousgard
Summary: Mac tries to just live her life - she goes to school, she comes home, she delivers papers - but just when she’s minding her own business, things happen.Or, Mac meets Tiffany and KJ one Halloween night and starts to realize some things about herself.





	you'll rebel to anything

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! welcome to my first fanfic in almost 3 years!!
> 
> i love paper girls and i can't believe there basically isn't a fandom for it. i decided to make a small contribution. mac is my child and i relate to her a lot. i hope more people start realizing how awesome this series is.
> 
> this story is set in '87-88. i made a reference to a depeche mode song that didn't debut until 1990, but it just worked really well so i left it. just pretend ok. the title comes from a mindless self indulgence song which doesn't really fit mac at all, but i liked the title and thought it worked for her.

Mac is alone most of the time, and it suits her purposes.

She’s not sure why loners are always a target for the popular kids at school. Mac tries to just live her life - she goes to school, she comes home, she delivers papers - but just when she’s minding her own business, things happen.

At school, girls whisper things about her behind her back. They say things to her face, too. Last week, she had been eating her lunch (a mostly-cold slice of cafeteria pizza), walkman turned up to cover any outside noise, when she felt something drop onto her head. Liquid trickled down over her hair, dripping onto the back of her neck and jacket, dampening the front of her shirt and jeans. Milk.

She turned, lowering her headphones.

There was a girl standing behind her, her green eyes wide with fear and surprise. It was the new girl, the pretty one that Natasha and her group had been so quick to befriend. Mac was hardly surprised to see Natasha standing next to the girl, wearing a smirk that caused her cheek to dimple. The spilled milk carton was back on the new girl’s tray, but Mac had no doubt that Natasha had been the one to pour it over her head.

“I’m - I’m sorry --” the new girl started to say.

“You don’t need to apologize to  _ Mac, _ ” Natasha cut in nastily. “I think we improved her outfit, don’t you?” She laughed and caught the new girl’s arm. “Come on, Alice.” As the two of them walked away, she distinctly heard a voice from somewhere in the vicinity of Natasha’s lunch table call, “Dyke.”

Rage boils inside her, familiar, powerful. Mac lets it  overtake her, rising to her feet.

That day, she was sent home with a note from the principal explaining her detention, and a split lip. Fortunately, after she cleaned the blood off, the lip wasn’t that obvious. She doubted her stepmother would even notice. The note, she crumpled up and tossed into the trash.

Rage always helps. It makes the thoughts go away. Mac starts to rely on it. It becomes her default emotion.

Her stepmother drinks nine days out of ten. When Mac’s father isn’t around, her stepmother gets angry. She yells and follows Mac through the house, catches hold of her and leaves bruises on her skin. When Mac manages to get into her room and lock the door, she turns up her music loud enough to shake the house and then slips out the window while her stepmother is still yelling at her to turn it down.

When her stepmother has the lock on her door removed, Mac keeps away from home whenever her father isn’t there.

She steals a few packs of cigarettes and goes to the park. At night, it’s haunted either by teenagers from the high school, or creepy pedos. Mac isn’t sure which is worse. She stays hidden as much as possible. She climbs the trees above the playground, nestles in the branches, and watches the stars with a cigarette resting on her lip. She likes the quiet, whenever she can have it. 

She returns home in time to grab the newspapers for her morning routes, gets her bike from the garage and pedals out in the pale half-light.

On the morning she meets KJ, it’s Halloween. She gets up at 4 AM, pulls her bike out of the garage, and starts her route like normal. The leaves are crunchy beneath her tires, and she enjoys the silence. That song by Depeche Mode pops into her head:  _ Come crashing in, into my little world… _

_ Thwack.  _ Her papers crash gently against the pristinely painted doors of the houses a few blocks over from hers. The ones in this neighborhood are much nicer - well-kept lawns, expensive cars, regularly pressure-washed siding, tended gardens. Natasha lives somewhere around here, she thinks.  _ Whatever.  _ Mac reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a cigarette, which she is just lighting when she hears the yelling coming from the next block. 

She figures it’s the teenagers again. It was Halloween last night, and there are still teepees of toilet paper in some yards, smashed pumpkins on the street. Keeping the cigarette between her teeth, Mac rolls around the corner. 

Sure enough, it’s the teenagers. But they’re on the ground, and standing over them is a girl Mac’s own age, holding a field hockey stick. 

Mac is instantly impressed. The girl must have a mean hook. 

She rides closer, and notices the bag of newspapers slung over the girl’s back.  _ Huh, another girl deliverer? It’s about time.  _ A sense of solidarity rises within her. She doesn’t often feel anything about other kids her age - only in Girl Scouts. But something tells her to say something. She has to at least know the name of the girl who can take down two boys twice her size.

Not that they’re down for long. One of them is already starting to lunge toward the girl again when Mac swerves her bike between them. 

“Oh fuck, it’s this bitch again,” the boy says. Even though he’s wearing a monster mask, Mac recognizes his voice. She’s never bothered to learn his name, but he’s bothered her more than once on her route. 

“That’s right,” she says. “And this bitch has no issue putting this in your eye if you come any closer.” She holds up her cigarette, lightly glowing orange at the end.

The other boy snorts. “Not worth it, Jake.”

“Like she’d even actually do it.”

“Want to try me?” Mac leans in closer.

“Whatever.” Jake backs away. 

Once the high schoolers are out of sight, Mac turns to look at the girl, who is frowning.

“What?” asks Mac.

“I could have handled them on my own,” the girl replies, fingers tightening on her field hockey stick. Then her expression softens. “Thank you, though. It sounds like you’ve dealt with them before.”

Mac shrugs. “Since I started, I guess. About a year ago.”

The girl’s eyes widen slightly. “Wait, are you...is your name Mackenzie?”

“Well, yeah. I go by Mac, though,” Mac replies, surprise coloring her tone. She’s almost positive this girl doesn’t go to her school.

“We heard about you when we got hired,” the girl says, her eyes bright. “You’re, like...the only reason we could even get this job!”

Mac flushes a little. “I’m not sure about that.” She reaches up to tug on a strand of her hair, hoping the girl won’t ask any questions about it. Her father had pulled some strings to get hired at the paper, because he knew some of the employees and he wanted something that would keep Mac more “focused” or something. Mac had resisted at first (loudly), until she’d realized that she would earn money. She’d been collecting every penny she earned for the past year, with hopes to...well, she wasn’t sure what she would use it for. She was sure she would need it one day, though. 

The girl sticks out her hand. “I’m Karina, by the way. Everyone calls me KJ.”

Mac takes a puff of her cigarette before shaking her hand. “So, you said  _ we  _ earlier. Is there another girl delivering papers now, too?”

“Yeah! Tiffany. I haven’t run into her since we got hired, though. I’m not sure what streets she’s covering.”

Mac nods. “Well, it’s cool to see another girl around. Just watch out for the dumbasses like those guys. Oh, and stay away from the park on Hickory, if you didn’t know that already.”

“Wait, are you going?” KJ asks, as Mac starts to roll her bike forward again. When Mac looks back at her, she seems slightly embarrassed. “I thought maybe we could...team up.”

“Team up?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna brag or anything, but I’m pretty good with this.” She smirks and nods towards her hockey stick. “Safety in numbers, and everything. Maybe we could find Tiffany, too.”

Mac considers, eyeing first the hockey stick, then KJ. The girl is taller than her, skinny, but clearly with a little more muscle definition. “So are you on a team or something?”

“Yep, at Buttonwood Academy.”

_ Oh, she’s a private school girl.  _ Mac suddenly feels uncomfortable, tugging at the hem of her hand-me-down jacket. “Fancy,” she says. “I thought all the kids who went there were spoiled rich brats.”

“Most of them are,” KJ replies with a grin. “Some of the girls on my field hockey team are  _ insufferable. _ ”

Mac can’t help smiling back. “It’s got to be better than the school I go to. The kids there don’t have any fucking brains, I swear. You know someone managed to set the bathroom trash on fire one day?”

“How did they manage that?”

“Like I said, they’re fucking stupid.”

Mac discovers quickly that she likes the sound of KJ’s laugh.

-

That’s the beginning. They meet up with Tiffany later that night. Tiffany is a private school girl too, but she’s different, like KJ. She likes video games and electronics, and carries a walkie talkie in her back pocket. The three of them finish their routes together, and as the day dawns orange on Stony Creek, they promise to ride together when they can.

Mac rides home feeling light and airy, and when she goes inside, the house is still quiet. She gets back into bed, but can’t sleep. Her heart pounds, for some reason. She looks up at her ceiling and contemplates the idea of having friends.

It’s not like she doesn’t have  _ any  _ friends. But pretty much all of them are in Girl Scouts, and she doesn’t get to see them very often, since they don’t live very nearby. There’s Beth, who always asks her to make friendship bracelets when they go to summer camp each year. And Anna, who likes finding constellations with her when all the other girls have given up. Anna has the kind of smile that always makes Mac smile back - same as KJ. 

_ Real friends,  _ she thinks.  _ Maybe we can be real friends.  _

-

KJ is a very tactile person.

Sometimes, when the two of them are chatting at the end of their routes, KJ will reach over and touch Mac’s arm, or tap the top of her knuckle to get her attention. Once, she asked to touch Mac’s hair, because she envied how straight it was. Her fingers sent tingles over Mac’s scalp.

About two months into their friendship, KJ and Tiffany both start hugging her goodbye. Mac will never mention how much she enjoys the hugs. They’re warm, and they make her feel wanted. 

KJ continues to touch her more often. 

One day, riding out on a particularly dark winter morning, Mac’s bike swerves over a patch of ice on the road and she goes down hard, tearing her leggings at the knee. Bright red blood blooms over her skin. 

“Shit,” KJ murmurs, getting off her bike and running over. She kneels at Mac’s side, fingers gentle at her knee, avoiding the open wound. “Tiff, do you have that first aid kit?”

“Sure,” Tiffany replies, reaching into her bag. “You okay, Mac?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, it’s nothing,” Mac says, even though she doesn’t want KJ to move away. “You don’t need to waste a band aid on me, or whatever you have in there.”

“Well, I don’t want to watch you bleed all over the place, either,” KJ replies, quickly disinfecting the wound. 

“Fair point,” Mac mutters, watching her. After cleaning up the blood, she unwraps a band aid and places it carefully over her knee, smoothing it over with her finger. It makes Mac feel all tingly again, which she doesn’t really understand. Would she feel like that if it were Tiffany doing this? “All right, I’m good. Can we get going?”

“Sure, if you’re all right,” Tiffany says.

“Peachy fucking keen.” As Mac gets back on her bike, she still feels the phantom touch of KJ’s hand. 

-

They can’t always run their routes together, so Mac doesn’t see KJ and Tiffany as often as she would like. It takes them longer when they’re all riding together. Mac doesn’t want to lose her job over deciding to make friends. It’s okay, though. Mac is more used to being alone. The summer before she starts seventh grade, she discovers that she really likes books, and starts spending a lot of time at the library, reading by herself.

A lot of girls her age read  _ The Babysitter’s Club  _ series, but Mac reads one and gets bored. After that, she discovers  _ The Hobbit  _ and then  _ The Lord of the Rings.  _ The next time she meets up with KJ and Tiffany, she finds out that Tiffany read all of Tolkien’s books before she was even finished with fifth grade. KJ has vague memories of seeing an animated version of  _ Lord of the Rings  _ on TV when she was younger.

“It’s the one with the hobbits, right?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Mac replies. “They’re cool, though. And there’s dragons, and they fight these freaky wraith guys.”

“I don’t get a lot of time to read,” KJ says. “Homework, and field hockey practice and everything.”

“Yeah, but it’s summer now.” Mac reaches over and pokes KJ in the side, right where she’s ticklish, and grins when her hand gets batted away. “No excuses.”

KJ agrees to read  _ The Hobbit,  _ but doesn’t end up enjoying it as much as Mac does. That’s fine; everyone likes what they like. Not everyone needs escapist fantasies, like Mac. 

She spends every afternoon in August at the library, and keeps reading. 

-

Shortly after school starts again, Mac is riding her bike in town when she sees KJ.

She’s never run into Tiffany or KJ outside of the paper routes before. She’s so unexpectedly thrilled that she calls out to KJ before she can even think about it, and the other girl runs over to hug her. Mac’s nose gets pressed into KJ’s dark brown hair, and she smells strawberry shampoo.

“What are you doing out here?” KJ asks, when they break apart. “I’ve never seen you in this part of town.”

“Just riding around,” Mac replies. “You?”

“I was just picking up some new notebooks for school.” KJ holds up a plastic bag from the drug store. 

“Well...cool seeing you, I guess,” Mac says.

“Wait...do you have anything else to do today?”

“No, not really.”

“Wanna see a movie?” KJ jerks her thumb across the street, at the cinema. 

They end up seeing  _ It Takes Two _ because it looks the least terrible. Mac still zones out halfway through and ends up playing with the loose threads on her shorts, munching on the popcorn they’re sharing while her mind wanders. She looks over at KJ’s face in the dark. It’s lit up by the screen, made paler, and Mac stares at a single freckle over her cheek that she’d never noticed before. Just behind them, two teenagers are making out rather loudly; Mac jerks her head back to look at them when they spill their popcorn onto the floor. She makes a  _ shhh  _ sound at them, but they just laugh and go back to kissing.

Mac looks at KJ again.

Lots of people go to the movies just to make out, but Mac doesn’t see the point of that. Why bother paying to see a movie if you’re not going to watch it? But she  _ has  _ paid to see this movie, and now she’s not watching it. Instead, she’s staring at KJ.  _ Why?  _ In movies, boys always do that when they’re thinking about kissing the girl. 

Mac thinks about kissing KJ.

_ No, don’t think about that. It’s weird. Girls don’t kiss each other. _

Except that some girls do, because Mac remembers having a conversation with Anna about it last summer.  _ Are there, like...gay women, too?  _ she’d asked.  _ That AIDS thing, isn’t it only killing men?  _ Anna didn’t know much about AIDS, but she seemed to know something about gay women.  _ Of course there are,  _ she had replied, as if Mac’s question had been stupid.  _ My aunt’s one. _

_ What, for real? _

_ Yeah, she lives with another woman. _

Anna had proceeded to tell Mac all about her Aunt Cathy, who lived out west on a ranch with a woman who she definitely  _ kissed and stuff, just like my mom and dad do.  _ For some reason, Mac hadn’t been able to stop asking questions about it. She’d never thought that women could be together like that.

According to her dad, women weren’t  _ supposed  _ to be together like that. Neither were men.

_ That’s why God invented AIDS,  _ he would say, anytime it was mentioned on the news.  _ He’s punishing the gays for their sins.  _

It always made Mac’s stomach feel sour, even though she ended up repeating her dad’s words to people at school, sometimes. Her brother agreed with her dad, too, and her brother was always right, wasn’t he? 

If it’s wrong, why does she want it right now?

KJ turns, notices her staring. Mac feels herself turning red and stands up so abruptly, she upsets the bucket of popcorn. Without apologizing, Mac mutters something about needing to use the bathroom and runs out of the theater. 

She takes a moment, splashes water on her face, pushes the thoughts from her mind. She goes outside and lights a cigarette.

Several minutes later, when KJ comes out to look for her, Mac has carefully shelved the issue deep in the recesses of her mind.

-

To avoid thinking about the Thing, Mac gets angry. A lot. She gets into a few more fights at school, and the second time she is suspended, her brother claps her on the back and applauds her for following in his footsteps. Her dad yells at her, and her stepmother pretends nothing is wrong. During her suspensions, Mac rides her bike a lot. She goes down to the river, nearly three miles from home, and skips stones. Not everyone can skip stones, but Mac is very good at it. 

She thinks about quitting the paper route. If she did, she wouldn’t have to worry about seeing KJ. And if she didn’t see KJ, eventually those weird thoughts would go away.

But Mac doesn’t want to stop seeing KJ. KJ is her friend - her badass friend with the pretty smile. There isn’t anyone else like KJ.

Besides, she can ignore the feelings as long as she stays focused on other things. And eventually they’ll go away, and she’ll be back to normal.

Normal is all she hopes for. 


End file.
